Win the hanging rook on g7
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 1199 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A hanging piece is one that is attacked and not defended, or defended too few times. Count attackers against defenders on each enemy unit; where attackers win, take it — often with an in-between move or a check to gain the extra tempo.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g2, rook h7, bishop f7, pawn a2 f3.
Black: king g5, queen g7, bishop g6, knight a6, pawn a4 b6 c6.
5 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 52.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 8 points of material (10 against 18; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g2, the black king on g5.
It is White to move on move 52, with 24 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 2 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e, g, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, c.
The White king has 7 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
52. Rxg7 Kf6 53. Rxg6+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to g7 keeps the pressure (+4.8).
- Well found: rook to g6 (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kf6, then Rxg6+ and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 52. Rxg7 — rook to g7 (capture)
- Kf6 — king to f6
- 53. Rxg6+ — rook to g6 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Remove the defender
Capture the guard first — then take what it protected.
Removing the defender is the straightforward plan: capture the guard first, then take what it guarded. Unlike deflection, the defender is not lured away — it is traded off or destroyed on the spot. Stare at the target you crave and ask who defends it, and whether that defender can be profitably eaten. Count the whole capture sequence, not just the first move — the trade must pay off at the end.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 007
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